Why Grief?

why Grief is philosophically important - to me

Since my interview with

Romaric Jannel

, which you can read here, I’ve had some good conversations with people interested in my philosophical views on grief or looking to expand their understanding. One question that stood out to me was, “What’s so interesting about grief?” This got me thinking that maybe others might have the same question but hesitate to ask, so I want to offer a broader answer.

Why is grief philosophically interesting?

Grief confronts us with some of the most fundamental questions about existence. When we lose someone, we’re not just faced with their absence but also with a disruption in our sense of identity. Grief forces us to re-evaluate who we are in relation to the world and how our relationships, which once grounded us, have changed or dissolved. An existential rupture challenges our understanding of life’s meaning, death’s finality, and the following emotional processes.

Philosophers like Michael Cholbi and Thomas Attig have explored how grief demands reconfiguring the self. For Cholbi, grief is not merely an emotional response but a form of 'identity investment'—our sense of who we are is bound up in those we love. When they die, the attachments that shaped our identities are severed, forcing us to reconstruct ourselves in the aftermath. This reconfiguration is not merely psychological but ontological; we must grapple with what it means to exist in a world now marked by loss.

Attig emphasises that grief is a process of relearning the world. After a loss, familiar places, routines, and even values are destabilised. We must find new ways of being and living in a reality that has shifted beneath our feet. This idea intersects with Matthew Ratcliffe’s phenomenological approach, where grief alters our fundamental experience of the world. For Ratcliffe, grief reconfigures our ‘existential space’—the lived sense of possibility, meaning, and emotional resonance. The world feels diminished, and possibilities that once felt open are now closed, changing how we experience time, relationships, and even our sense of the future.

Finally, Fuchs highlights the embodied and relational dimensions of grief. For Fuchs, our emotional and existential experiences are deeply interwoven with our bodily and social existence. The loss of a loved one disrupts this embodied sense of belonging and can even lead to a 'de-synchronization' of time, where the grieving person feels out of step with the world around them. Grief, therefore, challenges our understanding of selfhood not as a solitary, isolated entity but as something deeply embedded in relationships, embodied existence, and time itself.

What makes grief even more philosophically rich, as I see it, is that it operates as a Mercelian mystery; unlike problems, which can be solved, mysteries such as grief are lived experiences that remain inexhaustible and resist complete understanding. Separating these two allows Gabriel Marcel to differentiate between a problem to be solved and a mystery we live through and confront. Unlike problems which can be solved, mysteries such as grief are lived experiences that resist complete understanding. Marcel's distinction highlights that grief isn't something we 'get over'; instead, grief fundamentally reshapes us, and the idea of 'moving on' simplifies this intricate existential process.

At its best, philosophy seeks to answer questions that reach the general and universal, and grief is as universal a human experience as it gets. Yet, in all its complexity, grief is often side-stepped, especially in certain philosophical traditions. Take Gilbert Ryle, who insisted that philosophy is about words and sentences, limiting it to linguistic expression. When Merleau-Ponty asked if he would accept a distinction between meaning and word meaning, Ryle famously replied, 'No,' highlighting a more closed-minded aspect of analytic philosophy. This rigidity explains why grief, much like the meaning of a sunset, would be seen as ‘not philosophically interesting’—despite its rich, existential dimensions - since it cannot be placed into neat propositions.

So, if grief seems to be swept aside or treated as something to 'get over,' perhaps the real philosophical challenge is to remind ourselves that some mysteries—like grief—aren’t just to be solved but lived and reflected upon. In living through grief, we must confront how it reshapes our identity, relationships, and understanding of the world. I believe this is where grief opens the door to existential reflection and why grief is so philosophically fascinating.

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Here are some works to help anyone interested in Grief get to grips with the more Academic side:

• Michael Cholbi: Grief: A Philosophical Guide.

• Thomas Attig: How We Grieve: Re-Learning the World.

• Matthew Ratcliffe: Grief Worlds: A study of emotional experience.

• Jelena Markovic: Transformative Grief.

• Martha Fowlkes: The Social Regulation of Grief.

Andrew.